Every few months, I get together with Dan Margolies, a former KC Star reporter who now is health editor at KCUR-FM, and we talk about a wide array of subjects. Journalism is always among them.
Earlier this evening, we met at 75th Street Brewery, and at one point Dan asked me what I had thought about KC Star reporter Judy L. Thomas’ jailhouse interviews with F. Glenn Miller Jr., the avowed white supremacist who earlier this year killed three people outside the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom care center.
Miller is in a Johnson County detention center, and Thomas interviewed him several times by phone. The conversations resulted in a lengthy story that led The Star’s front page on Sunday.
**
It was fortuitous that Dan brought up the Miller story because when I had opened the paper yesterday, I zeroed in on that story. I had instant misgivings about it but read most of it anyway. I even toyed with the idea of writing a post about it yesterday, but I let the thought pass.
But Dan’s question made me refocus and reflect on the story because it goes to the heart of an issue that journalists struggle with periodically. The issue is the news-worthiness of jailhouse interviews with screwball killers — often serial killers — whose depraved actions cannot be justified or rationalized in any sane way.
I told Dan that, in general, I did not see any significant value in such stories, and I said that was how I essentially felt about the Miller story. He agreed, saying that whatever Miller had to say would not serve any useful purpose or open any new window on the murders.
One reason that I am not unequivocally opposed to such stories, however, is that many years ago, I wrote a similar story myself after getting a jailhouse interview with a Kansas City serial killer. I don’t recall if I got any positive feedback on that story, but I remember that I was quite proud of it. More about that in a minute, but back to Thomas’ story…
The seminal quote that Thomas got from Miller also served as the main headline for the story: “Every Jew in the world knows my name now.”
Along with everything else Miller told Thomas, that statement serves just one purpose — to advance Miller’s goal of calling attention to himself and the “cause” that prompted him to kill three people, none of whom, as it turned out, was Jewish.
Reinforcing his worthlessness as a human being, Miller said that while he regretted killing 14-year-old Reat Underwood — “the young white boy,” as he called him — he had nothing to say to Reat’s family.
Now there’s a guy whose story you long to hear, huh?
**
I noted that I don’t believe stories like the one about Miller have value in general.
But there is another side of the issue. And that is that enterprising reporters, like Thomas, will always seek interviews with serial killers and other perpetrators of shocking crimes simply because the reporters want to know what was going on in the minds of the criminals and because they firmly believe that the interviews will help “advance” the story in some way, even if it is difficult to express exactly how.
The desire to get “the other side of the story” — that is, the perpetrator’s side — courses through reporters’ bloodstreams. It is hard to resist that pull, and that’s true not only for reporters. Most editors also want “the scoop,” even though it is incumbent on the editors to weigh very carefully whether such a story serves the public interest.
It is apparent that Thomas’ editor — and undoubtedly Thomas herself — struggled with that question. Thomas’ story devoted several paragraphs to rationalizing why the story merited publication.
The justifying began even before the “jump,” that is before the story left the front page and continued inside the “A” section. In the fourth paragraph, Thomas paraphrased Leonard Zeskind, president of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, as saying the public needed to pay attention to “those who promote racist and violent views to understand what motivates them and to prevent future tragedies.”
The justifying continued several paragraphs later, when Thomas quoted Zeskind as saying:
“Learning about them (white supremacists) is our responsibility so that we may be better equipped to tackle this ongoing problem. Ignoring it, quarantining it, shutting our eyes, closing our ears, hasn’t stopped any Nazi killers. Opening our eyes, joining with others, taking public stands against racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry of the type displayed by Glenn Miller for decades is the best guarantee of building a truly open, democratic society.”
Well, that is very eloquently stated, but I just don’t see how giving Glenn Miller a platform to express his twisted, ridiculous views — or to recount how he advanced on innocent people and shot them — helps advance a democratic society. I mean, how helpful is it to hear racists explain why they think black people are inferior to whites? Is there any additional insight to be gained by hearing from people like that? I’m pretty sure NOT!
**
And yet, as I said earlier, many years ago I interviewed a serial killer and wrote a story that was in the same vein as that of Judy Thomas.
The subject of my story was a guy named William Turney Stitt, who had fatally stabbed two women, for no apparent reason, a year apart. The story ran on the front page of The Kansas City Times (then the morning edition of The Star) on Thursday, June 21, 1973.
Stitt killed one woman, 19-year-old Gloria Schuler, after spotting her in a self-service laundry at 39th and Washington, a block west of Broadway. While Schuler’s husband was in the restroom, Stitt parked his car, ran inside and stabbed Schuler several times with a kitchen knife he was carrying. He fled, and, then, when Schuler’s husband got back to her, she said (and these words made a lifelong impression on me) “Some son of a bitch stabbed me.”
Those were her last words.
A year earlier, Stitt fatally stabbed a woman named Joan R. Merritt after running her car off Westport Road in Independence.
Clearly, William Turney Stitt was a no-good son of a bitch. But I wanted to know what was behind his impulse to kill those women and why he had done so. (He previously had served eight-plus years in a military disciplinary barracks for strangling a prostitute in Germany in 1956.)
He provided me with the answer to why he had done what he did: He had a “destructive fantasy” that was intertwined with thoughts of sexual aggression. I also reported that a psychiatrist at Western Missouri Mental Health Center had diagnosed him with a “personality disorder of longstanding nature.”
…So, did my story serve the public interest more than Judy Thomas’ story? Hard to say, isn’t it? Certainly, the families of Stitt’s three victims didn’t give a shit what was going through Stitt’s mind when he stabbed, or strangled, the women. And I doubt that my story shed any light on the subject of longstanding personality disorder.
But, like Thomas, I was determined to find out what the hell that goofball was thinking.
And the editors turned me loose.
**
Before the advent of The Star’s electronic library, in the early ’90s, The Star maintained staff by-lined stories in distinctive, dull-gold, business-size envelopes that were stacked vertically in dozens of metal file drawers on the third floor of The Star building at 18th and Grand.
The librarians had a surgically precise method of folding those stories so that very long stories folded up like road maps and fit snugly into those gold envelopes.
I tell you all that because, as you can see below, the story about William Stitt is one that I kept (one of only about 20) when the librarians gave each of us our by-line files after the electronic library was in place.
So, you see, I have a hard time being extremely critical of Judy Thomas and her Glenn Miller story. Who knows? She might even clip that story out with a pair of scissors and put it in an envelope to show people decades from now.
As usual, Thomas’ story is a journalistic farce on several levels.
First, she allows this coward to try and hold himself out as bravely standing there trying to kill as many Jews as possible without challenge. That is a flat out lie. The truth is that everyplace he went was a posted gun-free zone where he could expect to find no armed opposition. He then picked the most vulnerable targets he could find and fled rapidly before any response could be mounted. In the end he parked in another no-gun zone where he meekly surrendered to police.
Secondly, Thomas is a poor choice to write any piece on hate given her own record of hateful “investigative” pieces that are basically ideological diatribes. One recalls one she did on a gathering of veterans in Missouri that was such a hatchet job that it got The Star sued.
Third, many voices in the Kansas City area are working for interfaith harmony, but none were interviewed for this pathetic nightmare. Instead, Thomas picks two hateful, far-left, ideological soulmates, Lenny Zeskind and Mark Levin. Zeskind, like Thomas, sees anyone on the right as a potential Klan member, and Levin has long been active in the Mainstream Coalition, anti-evangelical hate group. Neither has any record whatsoever of working toward interfaith harmony
Bottom line, Thomas allows a hateful coward to present, unchallenged, a distorted record of what actually occurred, leaning on the commentary of two of the metro area’s most hateful ideologues for filler material. In essence, it’s an article about a bigot, written by a bigot, with supporting testimony from two other bigots.
I got a laugh from your “bottom line,” John, although I’m sure Judy won’t find it humorous.
Judy is an excellent reporter, but she definitely brings her personal tilts to her investigative stories. More often than not, I agree with her — as most current and former reporters at The Star would — as you well know. I can see where she drives conservatives absolutely crazy, as she did with you on this story.
My bottom line is I think the editors should not have “commissioned” this piece. Margolies is right: The story was an overreach from the time the idea was hatched.
Exactly. What “knowledge” did we gain from this piece? None, zero, nada. The “gain” was that a bigoted, hateful coward was allowed to glorify the slaughter of three defenseless people and the irony is that he even failed In his goal to kill Jews because not one of his vulnerable victims was Jewish.
PS My compliments to your copy editor.
Our award-winning copy editing staff will be delighted to hear of your satisfaction.
My inquisitive nature made me wonder what became of Stitt. I googled William T. Stitt and found a very interesting account on a website, caselaw.findlaw. If you don’t know you may want to check it out.
You’re doing some good reporting, Gayle. I read two case reports, one from 2003, the other from 2008. The result of both cases was that Stitt — who changed his name to William T. Barlow in the late 198s — remained legally confined at the Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Center. He was originally committed as a criminal sexual psychopath.
However, a search of the Missouri Department of Corrections’ offenders website turned up nothing for either William T. Stitt or William T. Barlow. It’s possible he has died (he would be about 77 years old) or maybe he’s out now.
…I saw something in the case law that I had not known: After he killed the prostitute in Germany, he had sex with her corpse. Whoa!!!
P.S. I wanted to let you know what I found out about Roadrunner. The KC Pet Project didn’t return my calls from yesterday or today, so I went out there this afternoon. A counter clerk told me, as we already knew, that Roadrunner is doing well in foster care. She also told me, however, that he appears to have no psychological damage. I was very happy to hear that. Also, the clerk told me that a “hold” has been placed on him as far as potential adoption and that an animal shelter employee had expressed interest in adopting him. That might be the best thing that could happen. He’s obviously a “special needs” dog…I love him without ever having seen him and hope he has a great life from here on out. I’ll let you know if I found out anything more.
Must have missed that about the German prostitute — gross!
On a happier note, I agree, a home with a shelter employee would be a good outcome for little Roadrunner (love the name!). Dogs are amazingly resilient, even to the extent that they will lick the hand that beats them. The thought of doing that harm turns my stomach. He deserves to live out his days happy and content.
There are so many wonderful pups that are available in these rescue shelters. We just filled out our legal limit with a “hard to place” pup and you couldn’t want a better pet. After spending four months in a kennel it was instantly house broken. It gets along famously with the rest of our pets and is months ahead of where we thought she would be when we got her. The biggest problem is that she occasionally surprises us when she does something the other pups are trained not to do.
Good for you, AND good for her! We knew some history on the dog we got last year at Wayside, and it wasn’t good, so we do all we can to make her life happy; and she reciprocates, as dogs will do.